The Dyatlov Pass Orange Spheres

The night of 1 to 2 February 1959. The eastern slope of Kholat Syakhl, in the Northern Urals. Nine hikers led by Igor Dyatlov, 23, lost their lives. A tenth, Yuri Yudin, had turned back ill on 28 January.

Around the deaths grew a second story. Glowing spheres in the sky. No one reported one at the tent itself. The sightings came from other people, on other nights, across the northern Urals.

It began on the night of the deaths. To the south, hikers in the Blinov group described "Glowing and pulsating orbits flying in the direction of the Kholat Syakhl/Dyatlov Pass." A student, G. Atamanaki, reportedly saw the sphere over Otorten, a nearby peak.

17 February 1959. Before dawn, from Tagil to Ivdel. Meteorologist Tokareva watched a "Moving star with a tail" that "gradually began to swell, forming a large ball." Serviceman Savkin saw a "Ball of bright white light" wrapped at times in dense white fog, moving north. The next day the Tagil Worker ran "Unusual celestial phenomenon" by A. Kissel. It followed the sphere from 06:55 until it faded at 07:05.

31 March 1959. Around 04:00, at the search camp near the pass. Meshcheryakov, the hiker on duty, saw a large fire-coloured ring to the east. The whole camp was woken. For 20 minutes it moved toward them. Then it hid behind height 880. Searcher Valentin Gerasimovich Yakimenko remembered it. "The ball moved silently. It was orange-red, the size of a rising moon." A star appeared from its centre, grew to the size of the Moon and fell away from the sphere.

That morning a radiogram went out, signed by Avenburg, Potapov and Sogrin. The Tagil Worker clipping went into the criminal case file as page 344. Yet the conclusions of the 1959 inquiry left the spheres out. Its finding is usually quoted as death by a "compelling natural force."

In November 1990 the man who led that inquiry spoke out. Lev Nikitich Ivanov wrote in the newspaper Leninskiy Put that the regional Party official A. F. Yeshtokin "gave a completely categorical order: to classify everything, to seal everything up, to hand it over to the special unit and forget about it." He cited young trees with "traces of burning" and "no epicenter," and a sweater measuring "9900 decays per minute." His conclusion was "unknown, but radioactive energy" from an unidentified flying object.

The Prosecutor-General reopened the case in February 2019. On 11 July 2020 Andrey Kuryakov announced the cause. An avalanche, and poor visibility. "It was a heroic struggle," he said. The review did not address the spheres. A 2021 study by Gaume and Puzrin set out how a slab avalanche could have released and struck.

For the lights, some point to R-7 missile launches from Baikonur. One went up at 22:53 UTC on 30 March 1959 and failed. By one reckoning of local time, that is minutes before the camp's sighting. But no R-7 launch is listed between 2 January and 17 March, which leaves the February sphere unmatched. Others suggest parachute-mine exercises or a photoflash bomb from a US RB-47. Critics note that some testimony surfaced decades later.

The case lives on in Donnie Eichar's book Dead Mountain, the film Devil's Pass and the game Kholat. The deaths now have an official answer. The orange spheres are still argued over.